Moving is usually a challenging and time-consuming effort. These two tips will probably help anyone moving a home or office to save time, stress, and money.
In our many years of helping home buyers, we’ve found two things that most movers need to make a transition from one home to another. These things usually are just needed for a few days to a few months. They are moving boxes and extra storage space. This article will let you in on some of the very best options for both of those two items.
1. Boxes
Moving boxes always seem to be in short supply. Even if you are having professional movers pack your belongings you may still want to pack some things yourself. A basic small 12X12X16 moving box can cost as much as $6.00 if you buy it at an office supply store. Larger boxes can cost a lot more.
What you probably don’t know is that Home Depot has amazing prices on moving boxes. I assume that they made a strategic decision to price moving boxes about at their cost to bring in new business.
Home Depot’s small box is just 67 cents! Their large 18X18X24 box is just $1.37. They also have a medium-sized box that is priced under a dollar.
These boxes are priced less than used boxes in most areas.
After you are done with the boxes you can advertise them on Craigslist and people will be happy to take them off your hands. Since the market price for boxes is so much higher than what Home Depot sells these for you could probably sell these boxes used and almost break even.
2. Short Term Storage Space
During a move, there are often times when you can’t quite filter through everything you have in a time frame to match when you need to move. You can often benefit from moving some storage type items into somewhere other than your destination. Here is the trick: You can often get the first month at low cost or even free when you lease a storage building and most leases are month-to-month!
As an example when we moved our office recently we needed some extra space for desks, files and such for about 6 weeks while we made the transition. I spoke to five storage building locations that offered the first month free on a month-to-month lease. I ended up choosing the location nearest our office who actually offered a 600 square foot space with the first two months free. I did take the insurance policy they offered but even so, we ended up paying less than $30 to use that space for almost two months. It worked out very well.
We’ve found these two tips very useful in the moves we’ve been involved with recently and we make an effort to share them with our buyer clients. I hope you find them useful and share them with others also!